Bethlehem Shoals Presents: Quality Minutes, 9/9/11

At Quality Minutes, Shoals presents some of his favorite links of the week, on B/R and elsewhere.

SheridanHoops: Lockout scoops. Veteran reporter Chris Sheridan may no longer be with ESPN. But in its first week of existence, his new site (design woes aside) has been breaking as many stories as any major media outlet. While Sheridan needs to get attention, he also has no agenda or allegiances. It's lone wolf journalism at its best.

B/R: Russell Westbrook and the 10 Biggest Ball Hogs Since the Three Point Line. It's easy to call Westbrook a ball hog, but defining exactly what that means is more difficult. Featured columnist Kelly Scaletta gets in his digs at the likes of Westbrook, Allen Iverson, and Gilbert Arenas; he also gets at how hard it is to pin down this kind of cliche.

Ball Don't Lie: Union VP Accidentally Tweets that a Deal Looks Close, Claims He Was Hacked. Roger Mason, Jr. is deep in the NBPA, and for this he deserves our respect. However, when he accidentally tweets "Looking like a season" to the world right after the latest round of negotiations, he became the latest athlete to cry HACKED and think we might fall for it. Has anyone ever really been hacked?

B/R: Perry Jones vs. Terrence Jones: Who Will Be the Better NBA Player? William Penfield compares two of the most intriguing, versatile prospects in the NCAA. Both Jones and Jones are tall and skilled, and would have been lottery picks this summer. But while Perry has been hyped forever, he still has a ways to go. Terrence's stock shot up after a year at Kentucky, and if shorter, is closer to a finished product.

Lakers Blog: Kobe Bryant's Twitter Account Has Short Shelf-Life. As an adult, Kobe Bryant has never really been about brand. Kobe is Kobe, the basketball ninja whose glare and proficiency speak for themselves. Maybe that's why he wasn't on Twitter yet, and why his (seemingly ghost-written) account didn't last long. Kobe has a personality, he just doesn't feel like sharing it.

B/R: Is Pau Gasol Still One of the NBA's Top Five Power Forwards? Featured columnist Hadarii Jones makes a case for the second-most important Laker as, well, more important than people think. With Dirk Nowitzki's having redeemed "soft" this June, maybe Gasol's will start being appreciated for what he is, instead of what he's not—or what people assume he's not.

I Am A GM: DeShawn Stevenson Further Baits LeBron. Is Stevenson vs. LeBron James the most one-sided feud in the history of basketball? Here, Stevenson—now one up on LBJ in the ring department—tries to add fuel to the fire, without understanding that basketball is a team game. If the Mavs were (in some facile way) team over individual, then DeShawn of all people should know that, even more than usual, he's going out on a limb.

B/R: How Can Anybody Think Ricky Rubio Will Be an NBA Superstar? We've heard forever that Rubio is the Second Coming of Pete Maravich (as if that makes for a genius point guard—talk about a ball hog!) We've also been told that the European game is not the easiest gauge for NBA performance. But seriously, at what point do we start to question we've been told, and the YouTube friendly plays we've seen? Featured columnist Ethan Norof explores.